WASHINGTON, D.C. (WUSA) -- On a beautiful fall day without a cloud in the sky, a dark cloud hung over the football field at Eastern High School before the start of the Turkey Bowl.

This year's D.C. public school championship football game featured the Crimson Tide of Dunbar against the Indians of Anacostia. And that's where the dark cloud comes in: Anacostia was actually a last-minute replacement for Wilson High School, which, after much deliberation by the D.C. school system, was disqualified from the championship game for having played an ineligible player this year -- a young man who was found to have lived in Maryland and not in D.C.

Mayor Vincent Gray, who was among the thousands of people in attendance, said he agreed with the difficult decision to disqualify Wilson High.

"You've got to enforce the rules and that's what those who made the decision were trying to do, is properly enforce the rules," Mayor Gray said.

And then, just like that, as soon as the game began, the focus was on the field, on a back and forth game that was ultimately decided by a last-minute goal-line stand. The final score: Dunbar, 12, Anacostia, 8.